The invention relates to a device for taking soil samples, according to the generic clause of claim 1.
Overfertilizing of the soil of areas in agricultural use and the associated pollution of waters has increasingly been a subject of public concern recently. Agricultural operations are increasingly adopting the practice of regular soil testing. By analysis for nutrients and alternation of products of cultivation, fertilizing can be optimized and soil exhaustion prevented. It can be ascertained whether the texture of the soil is intact, whether the soil is well aerated, and whether the soil contains an adequate proportion of humus.
Hitherto, samples have been taken by means of probes driven into the ground and then removed, bringing along the section of soil enclosed by the probe.
Probes employed heretofore, as known for example from German Letters of Disclosure 2,545,851, have a tubular jacket bearing a replaceable tip at its foot end segment. The receiving space formed by the tubular jacket is closable towards the tip of the probe by a closure flap, whereby the body of the sample is automatically enclosable in the probe when the probe is extracted. With the use of such probes, however, it has been found that in the case of highly viscous soils, the closure flap must be prestressed with a very heavy spring load in order to hold the body of the sample dependably inside the probe. This heavy spring load, of course, involves the danger that the soil sample may be damaged or its structure affected by the closure flap. With the use of a receptacle arranged coaxially in the tubular jacket to accommodate the body of the sample, the bearing of the closure flap must be passed through the receptacle, substantially augmenting the outlay for the engineering and fabrication of a probe.